Friday, July 5, 2013

Joy Malone learns this the night she sees a stranger with all-black eyes across a crowded room—right before the mystery boy tries to cut out her eye. Instead, the wound accidentally marks her as property of Indelible Ink, and this dangerous mistake thrusts Joy into an incomprehensible world—a world of monsters at the window, glowing girls on the doorstep, and a life that will never be the same.

Now, Joy must pretend to be Ink’s chosen one—his helper, his love, his something for the foreseeable future...and failure to be convincing means a painful death for them both. Swept into a world of monsters, illusion, immortal honor and revenge, Joy discovers that sometimes, there are no mistakes.

Somewhere between reality and myth lies…

My Review: I haven't read a fairy novel in quite a while. And really it's hard to impress me in this particular genre just because I have really strong favorites. Have to say I was pleasantly surprised by this novel. It started out a bit shaky and frankly a bit cliche, but it only got better as it went along. The pacing was pretty decent. I enjoyed the speed at which the story progressed in terms of plot. Though I have to say that some of the events that took place could have been spaced out a bit better. When you have multiple big plot developing events happening quick fire it kind of detracts. That being said, the ultimate plot reveal still packed a wallop.

I really enjoyed Joy's character. A lot of shit has happened to her, things that would leave any normal teenager reeling. She wasn't immune to the emotional baggage that comes from family problems, nor was she an emotional wreck. She was dealing with it, sometimes in a stubborn and childish way, but that was okay. She was strong and when Ink enters her life, she keeps rolling with the punches. She's more than a little horrified by this sudden world full of creatures she could only conjure in her own nightmares. Yet Ink is able to balance out the horror with wonder.

Which brings me to Ink. Ink was this odd paradox of stereotypical bad boy mixed with a completely innocent child. Ink does not act, speak, or behave anywhere near social norms and thus his rather "emo" appearance didn't detract from his character. So many love interests are the misunderstood bad boy and I'm happy to say that Ink did not fall into that category. He was clinical and blunt and adorably oblivious. While he does become a bit more human, he still remains himself. While his and Joy's relationship escalated rather quickly from "I'm pretending I want to be with you" to "I actually do want to be with you"it didn't really bother me. The two of them clicked and as circumstances had it, their relationship was a natural progression in the story.

I really enjoyed the fey or the "twixt" in this novel. I've never really heard of the "Scribe" concept before. Ink and his sister Inq exist for the sole purpose of marking humans with claims from different sects of twixt. It was a really awesome concept, and one that was new to me. Their jobs were sometimes tragic but had an element of beauty to it as well. I really enjoyed the parts where they performed their duties to mark humans. The fey were awesome as usual. Much more similar to Holly Black's fey than say Melissa Marr's, but still it's own unique kind. A few characters I grew to really like just as much as Joy and Ink.

Overall, pretty decent read. Can't wait to see where future books in this series lead.